|
Paul ReiterGLENN: Now, we have Paul Reiter on the phone with us. He is in New York. He's a member of the World Health Organization. He's an expert on infectious diseases. He's a guy, you don't know his name, Paul Reiter most likely but he was one of the guys that was a reviewer for the IPCC report. He didn't agree with the conclusions and he said take my name off, I don't want to be part of the 2500 scientists. He had to threaten litigation and finally they took his name off. Hello? Hi, Paul, how are you, sir?
REITER: Hello there. I can hardly hear you.
GLENN: Paul has never done a talk show in America before. So this is your first exposure. We'll be gentle with you, Paul.
REITER: Could I just make a correction here?
GLENN: Sure.
REITER: I'm not a member of the UN or of the IPCC. I'm the professor at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Now, the event that you talked about happened in '99 for the third assessment report. I was a contributory author and the report writing goes through a series of drafts.
GLENN: Right.
REITER: And the first two drafts, the things that were being said were quite ridiculous and I've pointed out from the science what was wrong with what was being said and as you said, there was no notice taken of it. So I decided to withdraw. And withdrawal was difficult because they said, okay, we accept your resignation. Then I saw the next draft and it had my name on it. So I said, I don't want my name on it. And they said, well, your name goes on it because you've been a part of the process. And I said, well, I don't want my name because I haven't contributed anything. You haven't listened to anything I said. So then it got to be nasty and in the end they dropped my name from the final draft.
GLENN: Paul, have you talked to other scientists that found themselves in the same boat but maybe haven't taken it as far as you have?
REITER: I know that there are -- I don't know the number of them, but this has happened before. There was a very well known case of a hurricane specialist from Florida who was upset -- upset, what shall I say, was very unhappy about his particular field and he withdrew with a public letter and because they had wanted to keep his name on the report.
GLENN: Right.
REITER: And so I believe this happens quite a lot. You also ought to realize that this so-called 2006 of the world's top scientists, to my mind it's not really a good representation. To begin with, it's a United Nations organization and it means that those top scientists have to be selected from the 149 people who have signed the climate change convention or whatever. And that means that you have many people on the author list who are not scientists at all, who have very, very little knowledge of the science. And so in some ways there are many issues that are -- I will only tell you about my field because my field is the mosquito borne or the diseases transmitted by insects. The original reports, particularly in '95 and 2001, were quite ridiculous in many ways. Since then I must say things have improved.
GLENN: Well, I saw the Al Gore movie and they said that the, you know, that malaria will go out of control because of global warming.
REITER: Well, it's far too complicated to explain to you here really, but the -- I saw the movie, too. You probably remember the little animation of the mosquitoes moving up the mountain to Nairobi? Do you remember that?
GLENN: Yes, yes.
REITER: Well, that is one of the ridiculous things that is being bandied about by the global warming people. Let me tell you the details. Nairobi was not, as they say, was not -- the site of Nairobi was not selected because it was a healthy place for Europeans to live. In other words, high enough in the mountains. Nairobi was a camp in the construction of a railroad from Mambasa to Uganda and it was chosen because it was a watering place. Nairobi means the place of peaceful watering, I think, in the Maasai language. And right from the beginning it was really terribly malarious. It was so malarious that the doctors on the project wanted to get Nairobi or get the camp moved somewhere else. And it continued to be malarious. There were five major epidemics of malaria in Nairobi and in Kenya up to 1,000 meters higher than Nairobi. Nairobi's at 1,600 meters. There were some transmission even at 2,500 meters.
GLENN: I hate when that happens.
REITER: So basically it's a complete nonsense and we've pointed -- I've pointed this out to the advisors and Mr. Gore for the last 12 years but they've just hung onto that. This is very typical of many of the issues that we are facing and many of us scientists are frustrated because of this kind of misinformation.
GLENN: Paul, I have to tell you we're short on time and there's two things I want to ask you. The first one is last night I had dinner with a bunch of scientists and I asked them at one point -- one guy's career has just been destroyed and I mean, he almost broke out in tears last night. He was like, you know, I got Nobel Prize winning scientists writing letters saying, what, are you guys crazy? This guy's one of the best guys out there. And he said, my career is over because of my stance. And I said, to the entire table, I said, is there anybody here that in the dead of night has said, you know what, I'm just going to go to the other side because it's just not worth it. Every single one of them said no, and I was surprised by their reason. They all said, because millions of people will die because of these policies, that you look over in Africa in particular. With the policies that Al Gore and the people that are pushing for through things like malaria and just starvation and no electricity, no advancement, people will die because of these policies. Do you agree with that or not?
REITER: Well, I'm not a politician and I'm not really qualified to talk about those impacts, although I have read a little bit about it and certainly there are some very curious -- how should I say -- effects of some of these policies. What I can say is that millions more will not die because it gets warmer in Africa. It's plenty warm enough in Africa for a transmission of malaria in most places. And I might just say to you that the highland malaria issue is quite ridiculous because less than 2% of the African continent is about 2,000 meters anyway.
GLENN: You -- real quick you have to tell the story of the Al Gore book has been -- there's a smaller version of it now for schools in Great Britain.
REITER: Yeah.
GLENN: And there's an issue that you have, a small issue with the mosquito thing?
REITER: Well, there are a lot of issues but the thing that's really amusing, there are two pictures on a page. One is labeled mosquito and it's a wasp. It's a parasitic wasp. It's got its sticker in the wrong end. And the other is labeled a tsetse and it is a tsetse fly. I think it probably hit the windshield of a safari vehicle. It's got two legs missing. Both are very good educational pictures.
GLENN: Very good. If you can't even get the pictures right, I mean, how much of the science is actually right. Thank you very much, Paul, and best of luck to you. I'm glad you got your name off of the report.
REITER: Well, pleasure.
GLENN: Best of luck. By the way, the Czech Republic president is going to be on with us tomorrow and tonight we are going to be live at 7:00 and 9:00. If you've never seen a Glenn Beck program live on television, let me put it this way. The standards and practices people, they sweat, a lot. Join me tonight live, 7:00 and 9:00, Headline Prime.
